Posted on 08/23/2005 8:20:46 AM PDT by sionnsar
Hide the women and children. The Episcopal Church has a new Important CauseTM:
Amid growing tensions over illegal immigration along the U.S.-Mexico border, a gathering of Episcopalians in Scottsdale, Arizona, August 19-20 called for comprehensive reform and urged people of faith everywhere to shift the public debate by claiming it as a human right, rather than a political issue.
So LibProts want to make it a human right to be an American? Apparently.
"This is not about politics, this is about human lives," said Guerrero. "This is a theological and moral issue, especially for those of us who claim to be Christian. So many times we decide not to get involved because something is ’political’. This issue is about a lot of things, immigration and perhaps immigration reform. It’s about human rights, health care, drugs, labor laws. It’s like an onion; you peel one layer and you cry. Then you realize you have to peel another layer and then you cry some more."
Bishop Kirk Smith of Arizona said such gatherings are hopeful. "What’s been really good is that the word is spreading. The challenge for the church is to present a well thought out alternative to negative media and public opinion."
Did Dexter tell you to say that?
"This isn’t a Republican or a Democratic issue," said the Rev. John Denaro, staff officer for Church Relations and Outreach for Episcopal Migration Ministries. "It’s a human rights issue. I just hope the church can be unified around a vision to address it. It’s obscene that people are dying 30 miles away while others just go about their daily lives as if nothing’s happening."
Added Peter Fabre, a parishioner at St. Andrew’s Church in Glenville, Arizona: "I’m a conservative Republican and that’s not likely to change anytime soon, but that’s beside the point. This whole issue should be depoliticized. What we need is comprehensive immigration reform and to focus on the fact that we are Christians and to draw upon the knowledge that Christ as a model transcends politics."
This is a brilliant move on ECUSA's part. Who but the most heartless of conservatives isn't cut to the quick when people are dying in the desert? And the Piskies milked it for all it was worth.
One by one, those who died while crossing the desolate Arizona-Mexico border this fiscal year were remembered aloud by conference-goers during August 19 evening prayers:
"Rosella Cruz Gonzales, 26-year-old female from Mexico, died in May of this year from dehydration, near Yuma."
"I ask your prayers for Number 140, unknown man, age unknown and place of birth unknown, who died June 17 of this year of hyperthermia, 1.8 miles southwest of Silver Bell Mine"
By August 17, the death toll in border crossings was 246, up from last year. In the entire fiscal year October 1, 2003-September 30, 2004, an estimated 233 such deaths were reported.
The names or numbers of the dead dropped heavily into the weighty silence at the Franciscan Renewal Center here. Some were as young as 15; others were 53 and older—men, women and children. Many died of dehydration and hyperthermia, victims of the desert’s brutal heat. Still others faced another kind of brutality -- dying of gunshot wounds, motor vehicle accidents; blunt force trauma; a hanging death was reported. Some of the dead carried no clues to their identities and were listed as unknown, by numbers, rendering notification of relatives impossible.
While we're at it, let's compare the United States to a right-wing dictatorship. That'll win us support.
Praying the names and circumstances of the border deaths gives a human face to an often overlooked aspect of the illegal immigration debate, Guerrero said.
She compared it to the ritual of naming the murdered and the disappeared during the war in El Salvador. "When the names of the dead were called out, people answered ’Presente’ for them. The dead weren’t there, but in a sense, they were and that’s what we’re doing," Guerrero told the gathering.
Here's the deal. If you are a Mexican and I find you collapsed in the middle of the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, barely clinging to life, I will take you to a hospital where you will be nursed back to health on the US government's dime. You will then be put on some kind of transportation back to Mexico(I'll even throw as much money as I can if I'm around) and urged to emigrate to the United States legally. You will also be reminded that crossing a desert is a hazardous undertaking and that if you try it again, you might not be found before you die.
If, a few weeks later, I find you dead out in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, I will regret your death but I will also know that I did what I could and that it is no more your "right" to live in the United States than it is the right of Your Editor and a few hundred of his closest friends to move to Coahuila, declare it an independent republic and join Texas. If you want to cross the US border illegally, it is not my Christian duty to make sure you have an air-conditioned and policed walkway from Monterrey to Tucson. But back to the Piskies. There were, of course, the usual sob stories.
Luis Gonzalez told the group that amnesty programs do work. In an emotional testimonial, he described being separated from his parents at seven years old in order to cross the border illegally from Mexico into the U.S.
He was given another name, "George," and told to practice what to say if stopped by the border patrol. "We crossed the line sweating bullets," he said tearfully.
"We weren’t criminals; my parents were desperate for us to have an American education, more opportunities," he said. But he recalled a life lived in the shadows, always in fear of being discovered and deported. When he graduated high school, he was unable to apply to college without legal documentation. But the family received amnesty in 1996 and he subsequently graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is now an engineer.
That's great to hear, Luis. I'm delighted that things worked out for you. But here's an unpleasant fact; you were criminals. You were here illegally. That you received amnesty was your good fortune. Amnesty is no one's right. But let's throw around a few more stupid metaphors.
Petra Leija Falcon, lead organizer for the Pima County Interfaith Council in Tucson and the Arizona Interfaith Network, said change begins with education and by shifting the public debate.
"If you close your eyes and just listen to the public debate, it sounds like Mississippi all over again, in the days of the civil rights movement," said Falcon, a community organizer for 15 years. "It’s fear-based, it comes from a fear that there isn’t enough. If we let them in, who’ll be left out?"
Get in some Episcopal pseudo-empathy.
The Rev. Josie Beecher said feeling the overpowering heat of the day, with temperatures soaring around the 100-degree mark, brought her spiritually closer to the challenges faced by many of her parishioners in the Diocese of Olympia who are undocumented.
"When I got off the plane and the heat wave hit me, it touched me on a whole different level," she said. "Especially when I’ve heard children in my congregation who are eight years old talking about walking across the desert. Every year, we celebrate the Day of the Dead and we name the relatives. There’s always someone’s relative who died crossing the frontier. There are always friends and relatives who didn’t make it. And there are those who thought they were going to die and those whose faces glaze over and they don’t want to talk about it."
A little lefty paranoia.
He said that NAFTA, or the North American Free Trade Agreement, damaged an already fragile Mexican economy. "By the year 2012, the U.S. will need 3 million workers we don’t have," he said, citing "Immigration Proposals from the Heartland," a report by Doris Meissner and others from the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, an independent forum for public learning on global affairs. "The shifting of the people of the world needs to be realized. We don’t need to shut the borders down. We don’t need to regressively think anti-immigration, but that’s what’s happening from New York to New Jersey to Arizona."
And top it off with a rousing chorus of "Screw America and its fascist laws!"
"It’s time for the church as a whole, not just the Episcopal Church, to be the moral voice of the country," she said. "It’s a role we’ve given away. The church is primarily saying that we need to help poor people, our brothers and sisters who are dying trying to cross the border, that we need to be welcoming and concerned. What we’re not saying is that the church is made up of people who have arrived in this country without legal documentation, people who are being denied basic human rights. We the church must say that we the church are being denied our human rights and we will speak from our experience as church. So, the time has come for the church to say it, too, is illegal."
Yeah, all that will get the idiots laity on your side. Cause whores.
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. I would suggest that if they (illegal immmigrants) need help haul ass down to Mexico as a missionary and help them. I am not quite as benevolent as the Epis. church. If they want to be generous let em do it with their congregations funds not mine.
This is my problem with liberals. They can never just use their own funds to promote what they see as social good. They are constantly trying to use the state to force their neighbor to shoulder the burdens they dream up.
By the way, do you think these Episcopal leaders are going to get slimed for trying to mix politics and religion? Of course not, because the dirty secret is that the elites are perfectly happy with harnessing religion so long as it suits their agenda. We all know what would have been done to a Falwell type if he advocated closing the borders.
That any church would try to bowl over their congregations to support the OBL position shows you how desperate they have become. And, note well, we have the same old stupid racist crap thrown out. A lot of folks on here fall for that argument, too.
Don't give me that Mississippi in the sixties crap. Illegal Immigration is the new slavery in America. If you're going to accuse me of that kind of thought, I am going to liken you to the greedy plantation owner who did not want to pay ordinary folks a fair wage to pick your cotton. Switch it from cotton to lettuce and you've got it exactly.
What is this about the need for this issue to be depoliticized? We are talking about changing laws here. That would seem to me to necessarily involve politics.
I would never be able to finish my rant here without noting that these people are claiming to do this in the name of Christ. Really? Christ said love thy neighbor, not exploit thy neighbor. The Bible says to take up your cross, not take up your cross and put it on the back of another. With regard to paying taxes and obedience of laws, Christ said to render unto Caesar what belonged to Caesar and to God what was God's. Do you want to learn about illegal immigration? I think if you read the Old Testament a certain way regarding the Israelites fleeing to Egypt, you might just get the impression that they could have immigrated illegally and eventually turned into slaves.
I don't cry for illegals dying in the desert as much as I do for the mainstream Churches (I am a Catholic and suitable embarassed about how they pander to illegals as well) who have been infiltrated by a bunch of left-wing zealots. If they keep it up, these churches will no longer be the mainstream in America.
Hear here!!! Well said!!!
suitably embarassed about their position, of course.
I am another "Catholic" who is cross grained with the churches stance on illegal immigration. It has cost the church at the "collection plate". The church has not business advocating the breaking of US law. And please that they do not come to me and ask me to finance it.
These "human rightsers" call it cultural genocide when China overewhelms Tibet with hordes of Han Chinese "immigrants". But when the greedy politicans and rogue corporations that live on "immigrant" votes or substandard wages overwhelm European-Americans and their culture with hordes of Third World "immigrants", the "human rightsers" say that anyone who opposes this cultural innundation is a BIGOT!!!!
Cultural genocide is cultural genocide! Stop the Third-Worldization of America!!!!
THE OLD TESTAMENT POLICY ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: And the Gileadites seized the passages of the Jordan before the Ephraimites; and it was so, that when those Ephraimites who had escaped said, "Let me go over," that the men of Gilead said unto him, "Art thou an Ephraimite?" If he said, "Nay," then said they unto him, "Say now 'Shibboleth.'" And he said "Sibboleth," for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him and slew him at the passages of the Jordan; and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand. (Judges 12:5-6, King James Version of the Bible)
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